Free Republic

Former congressman Allen West (R., Fla.) is making a statement on the right to bear arms on his right bare arm with a new tattoo. Aces High Tattoo Shop in West Palm Beach, Fla. showed off the former Republican’s ink on its Instagram account over the weekend.

The militant group Islamic State (Isis) has ordered all girls and women in and around Iraq's northern city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation, the United Nations says. The "fatwa" issued by the Sunni Muslim fighters would potentially affect 4 million women and girls, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock, told reporters in Geneva by videolink from Irbil.

BOSTON, MA -- Massachusetts taxpayers will soon be on the hook for an estimated $2.6 million in costs for transgender surgeries and hormone therapy. On Friday, Gov. Deval Patrick, who leaves office at the end of 2014, announced that the state's Medicaid program would begin writing proposed regulations so taxpayer funds would cover the controversial medical procedure. According to the Boston Herald, the state believes the plan will cost $2.6 million per year based on figures from California and Vermont. Patrick has said the policy will make Massachusetts more equal, as transgender surgeries and hormone therapies are being included as...

School health services in the small Swedish city of Norrköping have found 60 cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) among schoolgirls since March, with evidence of mutilation found in all 30 girls in one class, 28 of the most severe form. In Sweden, where the EU’s Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) says that FGM “is considered to be a serious problem,” the law enables genital examination of children to be carried out without parents’ consent. ... FGM became widespread in Sweden in the early and mid-1990s with the influx of Somali migrants

<p>As if the senseless massacre of innocents in Nairobi’s Westgate mall was not horrific enough, reports are surfacing that the Islamic terrorists who seized the mall last weekend tortured, beheaded, raped, and mutilated their victims before killing them. A police doctor who entered the mall after the attack said these reports “are not allegations. Those are f***ing truths.”</p>

The AFL-CIO has demonstrated again its penchant for forcing its members to support social causes...This time ...sex-change surgery and therapy. As The Washington Times notes, last week’s vote could result in mandated employee insurance coverage for such things as hormone therapy and sex-change surgery. ...creates a dilemma for the majority of the union's members, forcing them "to endorse a delusion." “Nobody is advocating that people who suffer from gender confusion be discriminated against ...but ...people who recognize biological reality should not be compelled to entertain an irrefutable biological delusion.” “Even Johns-Hopkins University, which was kind of at the forefront of...

For the first time since 1981, when it dubbed sex-change operations "experimental," Medicare has opened the door to covering transexual operations, adding to the growing list of operations that would be allowed under Obamacare. Acting on a new request, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it is starting a new analysis that could lift the spending ban for sex-change operations with a goal of making a decision two days after Christmas and on the eve of Obamacare kicking in January 1. A 30-day public comment period just opened on the proposed "National Coverage Determination." "Surgical Treatment for Gender...

Over the last decade, as activists started pushing colleges to accommodate transgender students, they first raised only basic issues, like recognizing a name change or deciding who could use which bathrooms. But the front lines have shifted fast, particularly at the nation’s elite colleges, and a growing number are now offering students health insurance plans with coverage for gender reassignment surgery. No college or university offered such treatment just six years ago, but when Brown University said last week that its student health plan would be extended to cover sex-change surgery beginning in August, advocates for transgender students said Brown...

The Brown Student Health Insurance Plan will cover 14 different sexual reassignment surgery procedures starting in August, Director of Insurance and Purchasing Services Jeanne Hebert confirmed in an email to The Herald. The move makes Brown one of a handful of schools and healthcare providers nationwide to cover the surgeries. “We identified this as an important benefit for students to have access to,” Hebert wrote, adding that the change was in line with “Brown’s efforts to support all students.” The coverage will be funded through renewal rates paid for next year’s student healthcare coverage, she wrote. In general, the total...

Close to the small Mexican village of Onavas, south Sonora, archaeologists have uncovered the first pre-Hispanic cemetery of that area, dating to around 1,000 years ago.Infant burial with shell bracelet and earrings. Image: INAH A unique burial ground The burial ground consists of 25 individuals; 13 have intentional cranial deformation and five also have dental mutilation, cultural practices which are similar to those of pre-Hispanic groups in southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit, but until now, have not been seen in Sonora.Individual buried with a turtle shell placed over the abdomen. Image: INAH Some of the individuals were wearing ornaments such...

Asia News recently reported how the misogynist crime of female genital mutilation (FGM) continues to be a “widespread traditional practice” in “rural areas and more remote areas of Indonesia, particularly the island of Java.” The story makes sure to remind us, naturally, that while this crime is being perpetrated in a Muslim country, the crime “is not a rule set in a rigid manner by the precepts of Islam.” It is only widespread, we are consoled, because of the actions of “the more extreme and integral fringe.” In her coverage of this news report, freedom fighter Pamela Geller shrewdly asks...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Fourteen mutilated corpses and a threatening message aimed at a drug cartel were found inside a truck in the parking lot of a supermarket in a northern Mexico city, local media reported on Saturday. Mexico's attorney general's office could not immediately confirm the reports of the grisly discovery in Mante and police officials in the crime-ridden city were not immediately available for comment. Mexican media said the body parts belonged to 10 men and four women and the message was directed at the Gulf cartel.

How is it that Dr. Hatem al-Haj, a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics and a leading Muslim jurist, misunderstands Islamic law so severely as to think that this purely cultural practice has something to do with Islam? Surely it can't be that the mainstream media and Islamic leaders in the U.S. have been lying to us, and FGM really is justified in Islam, could it? Naaah. "AMJA Senior Committee Member: Female Genital Mutilation Is 'an Honor' per Islam," from Translating Jihad, April 27 (thanks to all who sent this in): A couple of weeks ago I posted a...

West Java. Guidelines on how to perform female genital mutilation/cutting issued by the Indonesian Ministry of Health could cause an increase in the practice, medical experts and rights groups fear. “This will give doctors a new motivation to circumcise [girls] because now they can say the Ministry of Health approves of this, and the Indonesian Council of Ulema [MUI] approves of it,” said Jurnalis Uddin, a doctor and lecturer at Yarsi University in Jakarta. Though FGM/C was banned in 2006, two of Indonesia’s Muslim organizations, including the largest and mostly moderate, Nahdlatul Ulama, ultimately condone the practice advising “not to...

FULL TITLE: He's all man now: A fuzzy-faced Chaz Bono shows off his beard for the first time as he runs errands round Los Angeles Two years after he started his gender reassignment process, Chaz Bono appears to have completely made the transition from female to male. He was snapped sporting a new beard as he ran errands round Los Angeles yesterday. The 42-year-old looked all man with his facial hair and short cropped hair as he filled up his car. Dressed in shorts and a vest top, Chaz teamed his look with a chunky bracelet, designer watch and aviator...

Breast Ironing Tradition Targeted In Cameroon From Nkepile Mabuse, CNN July 27, 2011 Activists fight breast ironing tradition 1 in 4 girls in Cameroon are affected, a study found All of the more than 200 ethnic groups use the practice The U.S. State Department assails the practice Charities want to show mothers in Cameroon that sex education, not the ironing, is the solution (CNN) -- Every morning before school, nine-year-old Terisia Techu would undergo a painful procedure. Her mother would take a burning hot pestle straight out of a fire and use it to press her breasts. With tears in...

A survey by the Kurdistan Minstiry of Health shows that 41 percent of women have gone under the practise of female genuital mutilation (FGM). The survey was carried out in July this year. The results of the survey were announced during a campaign to raise awareness on violence against women in Kurdistan earlier this week. Part of the campaign has focused on FGM. The survey by the government shows that mothers are the main party responsible for forcing their daughters experience the painful ritual and then grandmothers and fathers.

The physician who supervised Jaimie Cates' care at Children's Hospital in Boston today said he had never treated anyone with so many separate and sharp wounds and said the 11-year-old girl likely would have died if she had not been able to drag herself to the telephone and call for help. "Pretty much every part of her body had one cut on it," Dr. David Mooney told the Hillsborough County Superior Court jury on the second full day of testimony in Steven Spader's trial for first-degree murder, attempted murder and related charges. Mooney was the first witness on the stand...

El Imparcial (Hermosillo, Sonora) 9-6-10 Cloning priests! Monterrey, N.L. – Members of criminal organizations not only wear military type garments to disguise their activities but also dress as religious figures, the Cardinal of Monterrey, Francisco Robles Ortega, revealed yesterday. Over the two days that the Army has operated a checkpoint on the Reynosa Highway, numbers of people dressed as priests have been detained. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has assured that the presumed priests are imposters. In an interview after a mass, the Cardinal said, “People dressed as priests have been detained at checkpoints. They say, ‘See how I...

A human foot was found washed ashore on Whidbey Island in Washington state on Friday. The bare foot was found at about 11:15 a.m. by a tourist on the east side of the island, near the town of Greenbank. It is the ninth severed foot to be found on the B.C.-Washington coast since August 2007, with seven of those in B.C. “Based on what we’re seeing, we’re estimating that it either belongs to a female or a juvenile, because it’s a smaller size,” said Island County Det. Ed Wallace.